The Texas Camper's Pocket Companion: 5

Everything's bigger in Texas. Including the mistakes. Texas kills people who came prepared for the wrong thing. They pack for rattlesnakes and get dropped by heat before lunch. They fear the alligator and step in the fire ant mound. They watch the creek all afternoon and never think about the storm falling thirty miles upstream - in the one region of America where flash floods kill more people than anywhere else. This book makes sure you know which danger is which - before it matters. The fifth pocket guide in the Camping 101 series covers what actually gets people in Texas, in plain language you can read in an evening: Heat - the quiet one. Dry West Texas heat, humid Gulf heat, and why both kill people who felt fine an hour earlier. Flash Flood Alley. Why a dry creekbed is a river that isn't running yet, why you camp above the water, and the four words that save more Texans than any others: Turn Around, Don't Drown. All four venomous snakes - diamondback, copperhead, cottonmouth, coral - why the rattle is a bonus, not a promise, and exactly what to do (and never do) for a bite. Fire ants and Africanized bees. The real Texas ambush, the look-down-before-you-stand-still rule, and when a sting is a 911 call. Feral hogs. Millions of them - what actually causes attacks, and the clean-camp rules that keep sounders out of your site. Alligators, mountain lions, tornadoes and hurricanes, blue northers, burn bans by county - and which Texas you're actually camping in, because the Piney Woods and Big Bend are different planets. Fishing legally in Texas - the 17-and-up rule, freshwater vs. saltwater endorsements, the free-fishing secret inside every state park, and the parts that get people ticketed. Plus the five knots worth knowing, the order of operations when something goes wrong, and the numbers to write on paper before you lose signal. No foraging. No survival fantasy. No four-page gear lists. This book fits in a pocket. That is the entire point. Tell someone where you're going. Camp above the water. Shake out your boots. Then go have the best days of your life out there.